Ace-Garageguy

I recommend you forego getting opinions or "I heard" from people who may or may not know what they're talking about. PayPal has very specific rules regarding "buyer protection", and the best place to go for information is directly to the source. https://www.paypal.com/us/selfhelp/article/What-is-PayPal-Purchase-Protection-FAQ645 Generally, if you buy through Ebay or from other legitimate online vendors, you're covered. Buying from an individual (not through a recognized 3rd party like Ebay or Etsy, etc.) you may be SOL.

Painting outside still works great for me if all i'm concerned with is keeping the stink out of the house.

...cutting torch. Here's a '32 with a 429 Boss. The engine bay on a '29 is considerably smaller.

My '89 GMC is a stick. My '74 911 is a stick. My 550 Spyder (Beck) is a stick. My '86 MR2 is a stick. My Geo Metro is a stick. As soon as I get the chance to do it, my '86 XJ6 will be a stick. The '63 Olds convertible restomod (I drove it in HS and it's now in the parts acquisition phase) will be a stick, the tubbed 450 SL (also in the parts acquisition phase), and the pile-o-parts that will be a 'glass '32 Ford roadster will be sticks. Sadly, the little low-miles '06 Neon I'm looking at for a backup car is an auto. But it was a girl's car, so I guess that kinda figures...and for its new role in life, it needs to be something anybody can drive. I've encountered the same thing overseas that Tom Decker has (see post above) renting cars, and I vastly prefer a manual gearbox in any situation. I also refuse, and have always refused, to live a life that entails sitting stupidly for hours every week in stop-go commuter traffic.

It's somewhat doubtful the "General Lee" kit would have a "full frame", as the car it's based on is a unibody. Far as the "Tweedy Bird" goes, it's actually "Tweedy Pie", and is a 1923 T bucket on shortened '32 rails. It has a gas tank behind the bucket, not a turtledeck. Full story and description of the car here... http://www.kustomrama.com/index.php?title=Tweedy_Pie Roth's car... There WAS a "Tweety Bird" but it was an entirely different car from a different builder... https://www.jalopyjournal.com/?p=23038 Though there are a fair few 1/25 and 1/8 models of T-buckets with turtledecks, the '26-'27 T has never been produced in styrene, nor has its turtledeck. A '26-'27 T-bucket with turtledeck has been produced in resin, however. Maybe 2 or 3.

Yes, heavy rust is a game changer. I see your dilemma. Not worth trying to keep something going when it's literally disintegrating. That is a shame, and a problem we don't have to deal with much down here.

Having dealt with bouts of clinical depression most of my life, I'd have to say it can be a real time thief. If you can force yourself to get some significant physical exercise, even 20 minutes of brisk walking every other day, I can almost guarantee that you'll feel better and feel more like doing everything you're interested in...in spite of whatever problems you may be having to deal with. It's always worked for me, better than anything else.

A pair of gray catbirds have built a nest just outside one of my windows, and mombird has been sitting on eggs for about a week now. In about another week, there should be little birds. I'll be feeding the local feral cats very well for the next month or so, to try to give the kidbirds a better chance as they fledge and leave home, when they're most vulnerable to predators. Gray catbirds are related to mockingbirds, and have a very interesting song. The mombird sometimes sings softly to herself as she sits on the nest, and she's come to accept and trust me watching her.

I can't honestly complain too much. I'd have plenty of time to do almost everything I "want" to do if I pushed myself harder, but I just don't have the drive I had even 5 years back, and things seem to be getting less and less important as I get closer to the end of my run here. I've had to spend a lot of my life shoveling BS out of the way to get anything accomplished...because there are ALWAYS people who'd rather stand in your way screaming "it can't be done" than either help or just shut up and move aside...and I'm finally getting tired out by the lazy and stupid and uninspired and jealous. In Ayn Rand's Fountainhead, one of the haters-of-original-accomplishment, Ellsworth Toohey, asks the hero Howard Roark "what do you think of people like me?". Roark's response is "I don't think of people like you". I need to develop that ability, and focus entirely on my own vision for the remainder of my life. I agree with you, but it takes effort. Things don't just fall out of the sky. The old idea that "we make our own luck" is 100% accurate, and it takes preparedness to be able to utilize opportunities when they present themselves.

Yup. Hot air indeed. This is the first time I've done business with this particular Japanese seller, and there was only one shipping option offered. I'm usually happy with the cost AND the timeliness of shipping from overseas. As long as the item arrives within the estimated time window, I really don't give much of a damm HOW long it takes.

Yup. I've been thinking of doing an almost-box-stock T roadster for a while, and this thread came up. Fine. I'll maybe paint the wheels red and do the tires white, like somebody could have done back in 1923 when she was new. Otherwise bone stock. Maybe ignition wires, but otherwise bone stock. So then I'm thinking "hmmmm...how about the Frontenac DOHC cylinder head from the old T-touring kit, and maybe some Model A wire wheels, and an A transmission, and a little lowering job, and posable steering, and a cut-down windshield..." It's a curse.

The stock varies widely from store to store. I snagged several 1/8 Lindberg kits at one nearby a while back, but another store farther north had none. Yesterday a friend picked up some of the Dodge tanker and Red Wagon-on-a-trailer kits for me at the north store, but the store close by had none of those. It seems bizarre the manufacturers or distributors would dump recently repopped kits on a distress marketer like Ollies for pennies on the dollar, but apparently that's what's happening. Must be a bean-counter thing that appears to make no sense in actual physical reality. I guess it's cheaper to dump them and take a paper loss, rather than warehouse them for liquidation themselves online.

I start over (on the very rare occasions I actually finish anything). Under glass is generally for photos of completed models only. If you've already posted all your completed shots in "workbench", just copy them to "under glass". I usually shoot pix of the finished model on a different background, with better lighting etc. for "under glass".

This is all that was left of a tire in a 1/8 scale Revell kit I recently got in. So far, I haven't noticed anywhere it made an impression on any of the styrene parts in the box as it self-destructed.

Apparently Japan uses a similar system. I bought a Tamiya 911 kit over 30 days ago and it's still "in the mail". Must be by balloon...or it got put on a slow boat from China.

Thanks for the heads-up. I never would have suspected something that recent would behave that way, but it's not surprising in light of the sub-spec materials we often get from offshore-made stuff these days. I have several of those, was intending to use them, and will certainly mark the boxes and take precautions if and when. Definitely an idea that's worth trying.

I might be up for this...if I can find any time to work on anything model-related. All my on-bench-builds are complex and I'm in much the same boat as you. Maybe a simple little box-stock build would be a good idea.

Yeah, either a BMF wrap or coating with a decent epoxy will stop the plasticizer from the tires leaching into plastic rims and softening them (not the 5-minute goo). AMT's generic solid "piecrust" slicks don't appear to cause the wheel-melting problem, but their old solid Firestone and generic bias-ply tires often do...and they're most often the ones that leave imprints on parts of old vintage kits. Revell's fat '60s solid M&H slicks also will sometimes melt the rims over time, as will the Revell Firestone "dirt track" fronts in the original Orange Crate kits. What's interesting is that it doesn't ALWAYS happen. You can have tires that appear to be identical from the same era, and some will melt rims, some don't. Apparently the "vinyl" compound could vary during a kit run.

There comes a time when you've replaced everything and it's virtually a new vehicle again. My old '89 GMC is on about 230,000 miles now, and it's definitely cheaper to keep her running that to buy something newer. It works for me because I can do all my own work, so obviously, it's not the solution for everyone. The problem with buying another used car is that you just never really know what you're getting, and it can turn into a case of inheriting somebody else's problems that were poorly repaired or patched just to get rid of it.

Couldn't hurt, but once a crack starts, it's probably going to keep going. The "plasticizer" simply evaporates out of the "rubber" over time, and the tire gets physically smaller as the plasticizer leaves, and more brittle. I've had similar experiences with several Pegasus sets, but they haven't appeared to partially dissolve the plastic rims like some of the earlier tire compounds do. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The model companies HAVE addressed the problem occasionally, from what I've been able to piece together. Consider this: I recently bought a Revell 1/8 scale drag bike kit where the hollow front tire had dried out, shrunk, and split into multiple pieces. The rear tire, a solid and heavy compound, was fine. A later release of another Revell bike kit (that used the same size front tire) had a two-piece front tire made of a harder compound, and included revised instructions. And then a slightly later 1/8 scale Revell bike that used the same front tire had a further development, with a new one-piece front tire made of a heavy compound like the rear...and an additional instruction flyer included that explained the two-piece front had been replaced with a new one-piece. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I've also had Tamiya 1/12 scale hollow tires disintegrate from the weight of the model when stored in the typically humid environment where I live. I'm still looking for a replacement set of tires for this.

To avoid surprises at the PO, you can always use the online postage calculator. It works for me. https://postcalc.usps.com/

The old standby #11 blade, either the tip or the back of the tip, or the tip of a razor saw, or my favorite, a PE saw blade...as already mentioned. The PE blades from MCG are only .007" thick, so they make a thinner cut than some other methods. The problem is that they're somewhat flexible due to the thinness of the material they're made of, so you do indeed need to work slowly and carefully. Opening doors on resin models that are thick can be a real bugger, and if you get the gaps too wide, they're harder to correct than styrene. You'll find it's more difficult to get a good, strong edge that you can re-work with resin. While correcting a buggered opening on a styrene body is relatively easily achieved by simply gluing in strip-stock and filing to shape, with resin, you'll have to rebuild the bad part with thickened CA, most likely.

As is often the case with model cars, the best way to do this is like you'd do it on a real one. Removable front clips, usually fiberglass, are usually hinged at the front. They're often held closed by pins or quarter-turn (Dzus) fasteners on the top of the cowl and at the bottom of the rear of the fenders. To remove the entire clip, you hinge it forward, and then take the hinge pins out. This model built by Rotorbolt73 shows the idea pretty well. To get an idea of how to go about making hinges that actually fit and close the hood in the right place every time, see my tutorial here (the basic idea works on any flip-nose car). http://cs.scaleautomag.com/sca/modeling_subjects/f/31/t/94428.aspx

Me too.

Actually, I read somewhere on the internet (or maybe I heard it from my ex's hairdresser's brother's wife's mechanics pool boy Raoul) it's a training exercise to help modelers build patience by slowing down page loads randomly. Honest. It's for your own good. Really.